ECP: Take Back Your Shadow!

I’m going to share with you another tremendous life tool created by Carl Jung, the Swiss physician psychologist. It is the concept of the Shadow, our darkest psychological qualities that we see in others but not within ourselves. When someone triggers our Shadow, we react to the person with anger, but if we step back, we may find that we have over-reacted as happened in this true story from my own life-- a story I shared in my book, Keep Your Eye on the Prize! (www.keepyoureyeontheprize.org) . As a native Southerner, I attended a liberal East Coast college. One night freshman year, I returned to my dormitory room to find my door plastered with smashed tomatoes, eggs, and other items.  The perpetrators were gone when I arrived. I learned that a group of upperclassmen from New York led by Jessica (not her real name) had done this when drunk, chanting hateful things about my alleged racial prejudices. I could have taken action against them, but I was more puzzled than angry. I concluded that they were aggressively ignorant to make such assumptions without knowing anything at all about me other than my home place. Fast forward a year later, I had become a campus leader, and Jessica approached me to apologize. I accepted the apology and added, “You learned something about me, and I learned something about you.” What was this interaction about? Jessica and the group were actually the ones with the prejudices (against Southerners), but they had no awareness of this. My being from the South evoked their Shadow qualities, which they projected onto me, resulting in their aggressive behavior when disinhibited by alcohol. When Jessica apologized, it was because she had come to see that the projection was not valid and she had misjudged me. Whether Jessica ever consciously realized that it was her own Shadow that was the problem is unclear, but good for her for apologizing! She later became a Civil Rights lawyer in New York. Jessica is not alone. The problem of the Shadow exists in everyone. Bullying behavior is a great example of this. The bully is the one who feels weak but is not aware of the Shadow qualities. He or she protects against these feelings by picking on a vulnerable target and projecting the Shadow onto that person. Jung said that a major life task is to take back our Shadow when we find ourselves reacting negatively to someone, especially without reason. If you can catch yourself in the act and can reverse the projection process, you will grow and save yourself (and others) a lot of pain. Have you experienced this dynamic in life? Maybe you reacted negatively to someone or they reacted this way toward you. Let me know the story and what you learned from it!

Holistic Health-- 4 Compass Points: Emotional

Understanding the Emotional Compass Point is like understanding the universe! Whether we look at it on a macroscopic as psychology or the microscopic level as neurochemistry or genetics, we still don’t know much about the human mind, including its mysterious connection to the body and overall wellness. This introduction will start things off by looking at the basic “big picture,” the psychological tasks of life.  

As discussed in my first book, Keep Your Eye on the Prize! www.keepyoureyeontheprize.org, the question, “What is life really about and what is the point of it all?” is one that people ask throughout life. Put another way, what is the “Prize”? Freud and Erikson concluded that the two major tasks of adult life are to love and to work. Accomplishing these tasks is not easy, because it requires skill in understanding and working with our emotions, most of which reside outside of our awareness in unconscious urges and desires that can govern our behavior in powerful ways. 

Gaining awareness of our emotions and what triggers them can give us more power to make conscious choices about how we react and behave. The more we understand about our emotions, the more we can choose actions that further happiness rather than distress. Even more importantly, medicine has become increasingly interested in how the mind-body connection promotes health or illness, so if health is your goal, read on! There will be a series of blogs that cover some of the basic aspects of emotional life. Look for titles beginning with “ECP” for “Emotional Compass Point.”    

Holistic Health-- the 4 Compass Points: Mental

The Mental compass point concerns the intellectual tasks of life—school and, ultimately, our life’s work, whether paid, unpaid, or a combination of both. Developing this part of ourselves is one of the two great challenges of adult life— to love and to work. Strive to do your best in school, and when you do take a job, do it to the best of your ability. Learn to be a reliable employee with a “can-do” attitude. Stay with it and don’t impulsively quit without a good reason, such as education or a new job that can enhance your career. If your current job is not the best fit or is not what you ultimately want to do, you are learning commitment and gaining valuable experience while you work on your career plan. Here are some tips:

1. If you are in school and not enjoying a course of study, talk with your advisor and consider making a change.

2. If you are working and don’t like your job, think about what the problem might be. Does the job not suit your personality, interests, or abilities? Is the work environment or schedule stressful? Do you feel inadequate to the task and need more training or education? Are your coworkers or bosses difficult or the circumstances (like a long commute) aggravating? Weigh the pluses and minuses. If this job is the best option for now and you cannot easily change it, try to change your attitude. Difficulties teach us a lot about ourselves, and learning to manage problems helps us to grow. Here is an example of a young man who could not change the circumstances of his job, so he changed himself. 

Desmond had an hour and a half commute in traffic each way to his internship. He found himself becoming progressively angrier and more frustrated with this waste of time until he realized that he had to come to grips with the situation. He could not change things, so he thought of ways to adapt. He listened to music, audio books, or used the time to think about problems and life in general. Soon, the dreaded commute became his special alone time.

3. Every career and job has its ups and downs. Emphasize the strong points and try not to dwell on the deficiencies. Before you quit, have a practical plan in mind to improve your career situation or get some career counseling.  

4. If you are not quitting in order to return to school, don’t quit without having secured a new job. Try not to be someone who changes jobs frequently, as such a pattern often raises red flags in the minds of future employers. 

5. If you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world!  You have just “bought some experience.”  You can course correct. 

6. If the only rub is money, ask yourself some hard questions. Are your expectations realistic and fair? Are you making enough to live? Can your employer afford to pay you more? Does this job reward you in other ways that you would lose if you left— like friends or a career that is, by its nature, helpful to others? 

7. Some people get caught up in a money-driven “rat race” and can’t seem to get out of it.  Are you? This is a slippery slope, with major implications for your mental and physical health, relationships, and your soul. Read about the Money Shadow in my book, Keep Your Eye on the Prize! (www.keepyoureyeontheprize.org). We will also discuss it in a later blog.